Amnesty report condemns Palestinian armed groups over war crimes

Beirut: Palestinian militant groups indiscriminately fired mortars and rockets at civilian areas in Israel, killing both Israeli and Palestinian civilians in several attacks that Amnesty International has labelled war crimes.

Amnesty report: The grandmother of Israeli soldier Jordan Bensimon at his funeral on July 22, 2014 in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. Photo: Getty Images

In a new report into the actions of militant groups in Gaza during last year's 50-day war with Israel, Amnesty said six civilians in Israel, including a four-year-old boy, were killed in such attacks during the 50-day conflict.

More than 2250 Palestinians, at least 1585 of them civilians, including more than 530 children, were killed in Gaza, and at least 16,245 homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by Israeli attacks during the conflict, some of which also amounted to war crimes, the report found.

"Indiscriminate attacks": Israeli children sit in a bomb shelter in Ashkelon during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. Photo: Getty Images

Sixty-six Israeli soldiers were also killed in the conflict that raged from July 8 until August 26.

But the report found the deadliest single incident was caused when a rocket fired from within Gaza landed in al-Shati refugee camp, killing 13 Palestinians, 11 of them children.

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"The violations by Palestinian armed groups don't only affect Israelis, they also affect civilians in Gaza," said Deborah Hyams, Amnesty International's researcher on Israel and Palestine.

Palestinian groups continue to insist that the deaths were the result of an attack by the Israel Defence Forces, however Amnesty says an independent munitions expert concluded the projectile used in the attack was Palestinian-made.

Attacks labelled war crimes: A picture taken from the southern Israeli city of Sderot shows four rockets being launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel on November 16, 2012. Photo: AFP

"We have been very critical of the actions of the Israel Defence Force and we continue to identify specific cases of Israeli attacks that should be investigated as war crimes during those 50 days," Ms Hyams said. "At the same time, the violations of one side simply do not justify or excuse the violations of the other side . . . the rockets used by Palestinian armed groups are unguided, they cannot be accurately aimed at specific targets and are therefore inherently indiscriminate."

In a war that wrought what Amnesty describes as an "unprecedented level of death, destruction and injury on the 1.8 million people in the Gaza Strip", more than 4800 rockets and 1700 mortars were fired from Gaza towards Israel, UN data indicates.

Bomb shelter: Israelis take cover in a large concrete pipe. Photo: Getty Images

Of those thousands of rockets and mortars, around 224 are estimated to have struck Israeli residential areas, while Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted many others.

The death of four-year-old Daniel Tragerman, who was killed on August 22 when a mortar fired from Gaza hit his family's car near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, spraying shrapnel into the tiny boy, was highlighted by Amnesty as one example of the devastating consequences of indiscriminate rocket fire.

Israeli firefighters extinguish a burning factory hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on June 28, 2014 at an industrial zone in the southern city of Sderot. Photo: AFP

"My husband and son were in the living room and I was yelling for them to come into the shelter. Shrapnel [from the mortar] entered Daniel's head, killing him immediately," his mother, Gila Tragerman, told Amnesty International.

Hamas' military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israelis, mostly from the southern Israeli city of Sderot, show the remains of a rocket on July 13, 2014. Photo: AFP

Fairfax Media visited Nahal Oz this month, where residents described their ongoing grief more than six months after Daniel's death, saying it was as if one of their own children had been killed. His family has since left the kibbutz, which sits just a few hundred metres from Israel's southern border with Gaza.

Amnesty's investigations were not able to verify Israel's allegations that Palestinian militant groups were using civilians as human shields, Ms Hyams said.

"In terms of the wider issue of [armed Palestinian groups] firing from residential areas, storing weapons in or next to civilian buildings, or launching attacks very near locations where hundreds of displaced civilians were taking shelter . . . these are a clear violation under international humanitarian law," she said.

In many cases throughout the 2014 hostilities, Palestinian armed groups launched both rockets and mortars in the general direction of residential centres in towns surrounding the Gaza Strip and cities in southern and central Israel, Amnesty's report found.

"In addition to firing thousands of rockets and mortars in violation of international humanitarian law . . . Hamas forces also summarily killed at least 23 people in the Gaza Strip who allegedly 'collaborated' with Israel," the report said.

The main groups which have claimed responsibility for rocket fire were the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas' armed wing); al-Quds Brigades (Islamic Jihad's armed wing); the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine); al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades (armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees); the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (an armed wing of Fatah) and the National Resistance Brigades (the armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

As the range of the rockets fired out of Gaza has increased, so too has the "circle of fear", with cities as far away as Haifa and Jerusalem now affected, the report found.

From 2001 to 2004, home-made Qassam rockets had a range of up to 10 kilometres, with the longer-range rockets reaching 17 kilometres. But in recent years, Amnesty says, armed groups in Gaza have produced, upgraded or smuggled in thousands of BM-21 Grad rockets with ranges of between 20 and 48 kilometres.

By the time of the November 2012 Israel-Gaza war, militants had acquired or produced smaller numbers of medium and long-range rockets including the Iranian Fajr 5 and locally produced M-75, both with a range of 75 kilometres.

In the 2014 war, the Qassam Brigades claimed to have fired R-160 rockets, a locally produced version of the Syrian M-302, with a range of 160 kilometres.

"The Israeli and Palestinian authorities must both co-operate with the probes of the UN Commission of Inquiry and the International Criminal Court to end decades of impunity that have perpetuated a cycle of violations in which civilians on both sides have paid a heavy price," said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.